


Lost and Losing

by respoftw



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Episode: s05e06 The Shrine, M/M, Pre-Slash, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-10 07:46:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11687190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/respoftw/pseuds/respoftw
Summary: Rodney's mind is slipping away.





	Lost and Losing

**Author's Note:**

> Please look at the tags before reading. This fills the 'suicide attempt' square on my h/c bingo card so...please keep yourself safe.

After their beers on the pier, Rodney let John walk him back to his quarters. _His_ quarters and not the infirmary, he had insisted. John had relented easily enough and Rodney suspected that there wasn't much John would deny him right now. A part of him wanted to take advantage of that, to make the move that he'd been holding on to for the past five years, but a larger part of him knew that he didn't want his first time with John to be his last.

Rodney was losing himself hour by hour now and, as much as he was dreading that moment when he lost John, he couldn't bear to imagine losing _that_ with John.

They'd had a nice night, shared some laughs, and Rodney had tried very hard to impress on John just how much his friendship had meant to him these past five years. He thinks he succeeded. He hopes it's a comfort to John later. After.

John leaves with the promise of meeting up for breakfast tomorrow and Rodney smiles sadly, nods lightly. He isn't sure he trusts himself to actually lie to John's face so he avoids looking directly at him. Now that John's gone and he's left alone, he regrets that.

It would have been nice to have one last memory of John's face.

Rodney turns away from the closed door and digs into the pockets of his sweatpants. The bottle of pills he'd taken when Jennifer wasn't looking have lain heavy against his leg all night and they feel heavier in his hand now.

It's a heavy decision and not one he's taken lightly. He had told John the truth earlier, he really had been hiding how much he'd already forgotten but with each passing hour it's getting harder and harder to pretend. Before this, if anyone had asked him his worst nightmare, the worst way he could imagine to die, he would have thought of the Wraith, or drowning, something sharp and red and he would have been so very wrong.

This was his worst nightmare. Slipping away bit by bit, grasping desperately for the grains of sand that made him who he was as they ran through his fingers. He could almost feel the tissue in his brain going dormant, the lights blinking out as each connection fizzled, a sinking feeling that gripped his chest and squeezed tight as the latest realisation that he had forgotten his cat’s name hit him.

He didn't want to go out like this.

He wouldn't go out like this.

Sitting down, he opens up his laptop and brings up a blank document.

He writes for thirty minutes, explaining his rationalisation, leaving instructions on what to tell Jeannie and trying to frame in words just how much everyone meant to him.

Reading it back, he sighs and highlights everything before pressing delete.

‘I'm sorry,’ he writes. ‘Thank you for trying.’

It wasn't much as goodbyes went but nothing he wrote would make this any easier, on him or them. Job done, Rodney heads into the bathroom and pours himself a glass of water. He unscrews the cap and pours the contents of the bottle out onto the counter and swallows the pills down one by one.

He walks out the bathroom and across to his bed, lies down and waits for it all to be over.

\-------

John shakes him awake the next morning and Rodney blinks, his eyes gummy and his mouth dry.

“Hey, buddy, I thought we were meeting for breakfast?”

Rodney groans and rubs his hand across his face. “Time issit?” he manages to ask.

“Almost two,” John replies. “You stay up for long after I left last night?”

Rodney tries to think back to last night but it's fuzzy in that new familiar way that feels like lead in his stomach. “I can't remember,” he says quietly.

John's hand on his shoulder squeezes softly and Rodney swallows a lump in his throat.

“That's ok, buddy,” John says. “How bout I walk you to the infirmary? Keller wants to take some more scans. You up for that?”

Rodney nods slowly, rising up from the bed and heading to the bathroom. As the door closes behind him, he almost trips over an empty pill bottle. Rodney picks it up distractedly and throws it in the wastebasket.

It's time to start a new day.

**Author's Note:**

> A happy one next, I promise.


End file.
